Ovid (43 BC - 17 AD) was one of the most popular poets of Classical Rome. In 8 AD he was suddenly banished to Pontus, on the Black Sea coast, in what is now Romania, from where he wrote a series of Letters. Although written probably in France, this manuscript had found its way to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary, York, by the end of the Middle Ages. The text, like almost all of Ovid's works, is in form of verse called elegiac couplets; the scribe has spaced out the writing at the end of each line to 'justify' the right-hand edge of the text. The first page of the text is dominated by the signature of Roger Twysden (1597-1672) an important collector of manuscripts, who lived at Roydon Hall, East Peckham (Kent).